Faster rendering

[Newmarket2]

I'm running a Vista laptop with not enough memory.
I'm thinking of getting a desktop for working with images.
What should I get in order to get the fastest overall performance in LR and PS?
I would guess memory, but I've also heard that there is an upper limit to the amount of memory the current versions of LR and PS can address - so 16 GB wouldn't help until 64 bit versions of the apps came out.
I also think that a separate graphics card would help - vs and integrated graphics capability.

Am I right on those 2?
Are they the most important?
Anything else important?

 

[LJR69]

LR 2 is 64 bit on the Mac and Windows Vista (64).

 

[clee01l]

LR is one of the few applications that I have used that truly takes advantage of a multi-cored processor. The more cores you can get on your CPU the better. That said, I've found 2 to be sufficient. A minimum of 3GB RAM will be not to shoddy. But I would not settle for less than 4GB on a new machine. 64 bit Windows will be an improvement over 32 and LR runs 64 bit is the OS is. As for graphics, I think the secret is RAM dedicated to the GPU and not sharing any with the CPU. You will also benefit from getting the fastest HD available. Your biggest lag is going to be I/O

I'm running a laptop with a dual core 64 bit chip. The OS is Vista32. I commonly process 14.6 mp DNG files and find the rendering imperceptably speedy. I compare this to Lightzone and Bibble Pro where with those, I can watch the screen paint as a new filter is applied. IMO any of the above bells and whistles could only make life sweeter.